Looks like the Advent calendar format has proven itself successful. LEGO appears to be making an effort to sell them in a secular/year-round fashion. An image of the City companion to this set was posted by GIR3691 over in the New City Stuff thread.

Wow. You must have money to burn. This and the corresponding City set are part of the Education / Dacta line and priced accordingly.

9349 is currently available for EUR 47.50 in Germany or GBP 39.99 in the UK. That's more than twice the full price of an advent calendar (EUR 19.99, which admittedly has more bricks and less minifigs). There are 22 minifigs, so ignoring the handful of extra bricks that are included it works out at EUR 2.16 per figure.

Price-wise this is almost like a supersize box set of the collectible minifigs, just that these are all effectively "normal" minifigs. I wonder how much it would cost to get all the individual figures and bricks on BrickLink...